Excerpted from Jean-Christophe. New York: Random House Modern Library, 1938, pp. 326-328

translated by Gilbert Cannan

pdf version

Only one living creature
seemed to take any notice of his existence: this was an old St.
Bernard, who used to come and lay his big head with its mournful
eyes on Christophe's knees when Christophe was sitting on the seat
in front of the house. They would look long at each other.
Christophe would not drive him away Unlike the sick Goethe, the
dog's eyes had no uneasiness for him Unlike him, he had no desire
to cry: "Go away! . . . Thou goblin thou shalt not catch me,
whatever thou doest!"

He asked nothing better
than to be engrossed by the dog's suppliant sleepy eyes and to
help the beast: he felt that there must be behind them an
imprisoned soul imploring his aid.

In those hours when he was
weak with suffering, torn alive away from life, devoid of human
egoism, he saw the victims of men, the field of battle in which
man triumphed in the bloody slaughter of all other creatures: and
his heart was filled with pity and horror. Even in the days when
he had been happy he had always loved the beasts: he had never
been able to bear cruelty towards them: he had always had a
detestation of sport, which he had never dared to express for fear
of ridicule: but his feeling of repulsion had been the secret
cause of the apparently inexplicable feeling of dislike he had had
for certain men: he had never been able to admit to his friendship
a man who could kill an animal for pleasure. It was not
sentimentality: no one knew better than he that life is based on
suffering and infinite cruelty: no man can live without making
others suffer. It is no use closing our eyes and fobbing ourselves
off with words. It is no use either coming to the conclusion that
we must renounce life and sniveling like children. No. We must
kill to live, if, at the time, there is no other means of living.
But the man who kills for the sake of killing is a miscreant. An
unconscious miscreant, I know. But, all the same, a miscreant. The
continual endeavor of man should be to lessen the sum of suffering
and cruelty: that is the first duty of humanity.

In ordinary life those
ideas remained buried in Christophe's inmost heart. He refused to
think of them. What was the good? What could he do? He had to be
Christophe, he had to accomplish his work, live at all costs, live
at the cost of the weak. ... It was not he who had made the
universe. . . . Better not think of it, better not think of it.
...

But when unhappiness had
dragged him down, him, too, to the level of the vanquished, he had
to think of these things. Only a little while ago he had blamed
Olivier for plunging into futile remorse and vain compassion for
all the wretchedness that men suffer and inflict. Now he went even
farther: with all the vehemence of his mighty nature he probed to
the depths of the tragedy of the universe: he suffered all the
sufferings of the world, and was left raw and bleeding. He could
not think of the animals without shuddering in anguish. He looked
into the eyes of the beasts and saw there a soul like his own, a
soul which could not speak: but the eyes cried for it:

"What have I done to you?
Why do you hurt me?" He could not bear to see the most ordinary
sights that he had seen hundreds of times —a calf crying in a
wicker pen, with its big, protruding eyes, with their bluish
whites and pink lids, and white lashes, its curly white tufts on
its forehead, its purple snout, its knock-kneed legs:—a lamb being
carried by a peasant with its four legs tied together, hanging
head down, trying to hold its head up, moaning like a child,
bleating and lolling its gray tongue:—fowls huddled together in a
basket:—the distant squeals of a pig being bled to death:—a fish
being cleaned on the kitchen-table. . . . The nameless tortures
which men inflict on such innocent creatures made his heart ache.
Grant animals a ray of reason, imagine what a frightful nightmare
the world is to them: a dream of cold-blooded men, blind and deaf,
cutting their throats, slitting them open, gutting them, cutting
them into pieces, cooking them alive, sometimes laughing at them
and their contortions as they writhe in agony. Is there anything
more atrocious among the cannibals of Africa? To a man whose mind
is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings
of animals than in the sufferings of men. For with the latter it
is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who
causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly
butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were
to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous.—And that is the
unpardonable crime. That alone is the justification of all that
men may suffer. It cries vengeance upon God. If there exists a
good God, then even the most humble of living things must be
saved. If God is good only to the strong, if there is no justice
for the weak and lowly, for the poor creatures who are offered up
as a sacrifice to humanity, then there is no such thing as
goodness, no such thing as justice.